December is here, Christmas countdowns have already started and the Santa Tracker is back in motion! The app is once again ready to show you where Santa is spending his time this Christmas, but you also get everyday updates until 25th of December!

Once Thanksgiving was dealt with, most Americans are already thinking of how to decorate their houses for the holidays: the lights, the garlands, the figurines, the tree, evvverything is already in stores and ready to be bought. Many of us have forgotten that Santa is getting ready and that the Santa Tracker on Google Play is relevant once more.

What is Google’s Santa Tracker?

This app is a huge digital undertaking of the holidays that will only offer more and more functions every year. Although you can find many tracker apps for Santa Claus, this is the only one that combines mobile and web functionality to offer a 25-day experience like no other. You get a new activity each day and at the end of the event you will get a “live” Santa tracker that will show you where on Earth the big bearded joyous man is at any given time.

If you are not a fan of Santa but you still like your kids to have fun, you can stream the app to your TV via Chromecast. Your children will enjoy the countdown to Christmas, new gifts and surprises and holiday magic.

Hangouts v5.1 started rolling out yesterday and it has just as many new perks as versions 4.0 and 5.0 – which is basically none. This new update will not be action-packed either as is only brings some small bug fixes for the animated GIFs and same old interface. The update is also available on the iOS App Store and the changes are just as minimal.

The changelog mentions little details regarding the update, apart from some improvements in the send button and the interface. The improvements offer no visual impact and they do not affect the overall performance of the app.

Official changelog:

Bug fixes and performance improvements

Updates to send button

User interface and accessibility improvements.

The changes do not look particularly interesting but we can hope that the lag spikes and the bug that prevented new messages from opening a new chat window are fixed.

You can download the APK from Google below; it is a secured file with a cryptographic signature that guarantees is has not been tampered with. If you do not want to wait for the official Hangouts update, you can download and install it yourself.

King of Thieves is a new little game from ZeptoLab where you can prove to the entire world you ARE the best thief around! The game is mostly a Dungeon Keeper mixed with some action-platformer features you can enjoy for free.

When you are a player you get a dungeon that can be filled with traps and defenses by you in order to keep your riches safe from other player invaders. You can, of course, try to steal your possessions back or even raid through other people’s dungeons. When you complete the single-player levels you can get more effective traps and more gear to defend you.

King of Thieves is a free to play game, but don’t be fooled by that, you will get lots and lots of in-app purchases. At first it doesn’t appear too chore-y, but it’s sure to become harder to beat without buying resources as you go. Head over to Google Play Store to give it a look.

Cars: Fast as Lightning is a new racing game coming directly from Gameloft. The little app is targeted at kids and it sort of keeps some of the charm the Cars series has been entertaining its fans with for years now.

The characters seem well animated and the animation itself resembles that of the films, plus the dialogue remains fresh and humorous.

The game has basic racing controls that include looping around tracks or slight steering, although the characters can steer themselves pretty well most of the time. You can of course redesign your car however you want when you’re in need of some changes and as you progress you can discover the town of Radiator Springs.

The game contains virtual currency, but parents get a warning at the beginning of the game so that they can set the game in such a manner that kids can’t buy virtual currency with real money. Kids can play it entirely free or you can pay money to get gems and coins. Check it out below!

Just in case you were wondering how you can get determined to lose some of that extra weight (in case you need it), there’s a new app ready to help you out. NuMi is a new piece of software coming from NutriSystem that adjusts a person’s lifestyle to help them lose that unwanted weight. The app allows users to log their meals, calorie consumption, water intake, activities and passions in order to create real and personalized recommendations for each individual.

The app then recommends where you should eat if you go out or what you could prepare for yourself if you stay at home. You can pick from around 12.000 recipes based on dietary preferences as well. It also includes restaurant chain recommendations based on the preferred cuisine, be it Italian, Asian, Mexican or good old American. Users can also check the common behaviors that lead to gaining weight, such as slip ups, victories and wobbles in the fight with those pesky extra kilos.

You can track your daily progress and contact a team of experts live that can encourage you and give you real-time advice. The app allows for the construction of grocery lists and a bar code scanner to always know how many calories you consume at every meal.

NuMi is not a free app though, but you can try it out for free for a limited time. You may be asked to give your billing information just to check the app though.

Google apps will soon change a bit when it comes co app integration and support. It will present native help interface rather than a boring and sometimes annoying web link to every app’s help page. Until now, a user looking for help had to pull up a web page where they had to look for help categories and articles and even for solutions to their problems. In case none of these worked, users had to ask support from Google via calling.

Now, after a YouTube and Wallet update, there is a sign that a Help app will come around and save the day soon. This will offer the possibility of browsing help categories or reading articles easier, without reaching a different browser. The Help interface would not open a new web page but work from the app itself.

It is not a huge change but Google Help app may just improve every user’s experience because the transition from a native app interface to a web page is far from an ideal user support experience from Google.